


you'll always be my favorite ghost

by heartunsettledsoul



Series: Forgotten Moments [28]
Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (I promise), (but chapter one is pure angst), (so try to hang in there with me), Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, The Voicemail Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:21:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29892114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartunsettledsoul/pseuds/heartunsettledsoul
Summary: With a shaking thumb, Jughead taps the little phone icon next to her name.The contact photo startles him as it takes up the whole of his screen, a now-decade old selfie of the two of them at Sweetwater River back in freshman year. Jughead doesn’t remember that being her contact picture, let alone remember taking it.“Hello, this is Betty Cooper. I’m not available right now so leave a message and I’ll get back to you!” It’s a simple chirp, meant for the nameless and faceless robocallers or the MBA candidates who call to take her out to dinner, but her voice is so familiar, so missed that he feels as though she’s speaking right to him.or, a two-year misunderstanding and making their way back to each other
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Series: Forgotten Moments [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/840687
Comments: 17
Kudos: 89





	you'll always be my favorite ghost

**Author's Note:**

> all my love and appreciation to the usual culprits, and especially to arsenicpanda for creating the heartbreaking gif header featured on my tumblr post for this. 
> 
> I'm not saying you need to listen to florence & the machine while you read, but I'm also saying you should do that if you want to feel as emo as I did while writing this.

_You keep me up at night_

_To my messages, you do not reply_

_You know I still like you the most_

_The best of the best and the worst of the worst_

_Well, you can never know_

_The places that I go_

_I still like you the most_

_You'll always be my favorite ghost_

“Big God,” Florence & the Machine 

  
  


* * *

So much of this night feels over the top. Too bougie. Too rich. Too _not him._ But his agent hyped up the publisher and his publisher hyped up their PR department and so here they are: Jughead is at an enormous Billions-o’-Pages in Midtown, wearing a suit he bought with his advance so he could stop showing up to meetings in a thrifted tweed coat. 

It always felt too on the nose but he was loath to spend money on anything else. 

(Not after the nurse practitioner at Iowa’s student health center had prescribed him antibiotics for the unending sinus infection from hell and carefully looked at him before asking, “Have you ever been to an optometrist?” 

Glasses are _not_ cheap.) 

The suit fits, so Jughead merely shifts in psychosomatic discomfort. In all five years since leaving Riverdale, he has never wished for his beanie to be above ground more. 

That he settles his nerves with a large swig from the flask in his suit pocket is something Jughead refuses to think about, even though the man he has inherited this addictive gene from is out in the crowd. 

Jughead shuffles out sheepishly after the introduction from Sam, wishing he hadn’t mentioned the Kenyon Review story—it’s one of Jughead’s earliest published pieces and it makes him cringe to reread now. He gives the reading to the not-insignificant crowd, wishes for the flask again when the photographer simply doesn’t quit, and then beckons for FP and JB to come forward to the cardboard standee of his cover if the guy is gonna be such an overbearing dick about it. 

JB has grown about a foot and ditched the braids and bandanas for a blunt haircut she tells him is _in_ while sporting a sleeve on her upper arm that features Rosie the Riveter in her bandana instead. It’s very her.

(It’s also very _her,_ but Jughead wipes away the memories of bandana bows and grease-stained overalls.) 

JB only had to take two trains to join the unbearable soiree, hopping over just from Greenwich Village and her NYU dorm. Jughead tried to talk their dad out of trekking from Toledo, not when he himself would be turning right around to go back to Iowa for his final MFA semester, but once FP insisted, Jughead put his advance to good use again and purchased a plane ticket. 

The motley Jones crew, Jughead thinks wryly as he slings his arms around them for the photo—now glad for the guy’s presence, though he clearly couldn’t give less of a shit about the marquee name’s family members. FP’s misty eyes get to him more than Jughead would like to admit and he no longer finds this night absurd; it was never _for_ him, but for his editor and agent and this obnoxious big-box bookstore, and for the people who show up at these kinds of things. 

(Again, Jughead has to shake away fleeting thoughts of who else he wishes might have shown up, impossible as it would have been. JB and FP are the only ones here because they’re the only ones who _know._ Gladys notwithstanding because, well, it’s Gladys and of course she didn’t bother.) 

After awkward small talk to close out the evening, Jughead’s team—he has a _team_ and this still boggles the mind—insists on taking him out for an even more over-the-top, more bougie, far-too-rich-for-his-blood dinner. It’s a steakhouse, though, so he would be a fool to say no. 

JB begs off, citing an early morning class, but FP joins them and all of the sudden it’s 1am and Jughead is slinging back bourbon with his father. 

“This hangover is going to be a bitch on the flight home,” FP chuckles. Jughead grimaces, thinking of his own flight. “Worth it to spend time with my boy, though. My son, the published author!” He exclaims this as though it’s the first time, but the entire bar has heard it several times over since they arrived. 

“Knock it off, Dad,” Jughead says, not without affection. “Do you know how many goddamn books are published every year? Do you know how many of my classmates are already negotiating second publishing contracts?” FP waves him away, but Jughead knows the numbers—he also knows how the more obnoxious members of his cohort scoffed at the name of his publishing house when he mentioned the offer to their professor on the way out of their workshop block. 

Jughead knows the odds of being a one-hit wonder. The odds of him getting that first hit were astronomical as it is. 

He throws back the rest of his glass and raps his knuckles on the bar for another two fingers. Sam passed over his American Excess card on the way out after the first round and said to put it on the company, so Jughead is drinking his money’s worth. 

They both are. 

FP just seems to be holding his weight far better; when Jughead stands to go take a piss, his footing is unsteady and FP shoots out a hand to rebalance him. He looks like he is about to say something more upfront but seems to rethink it and merely laughs to himself. “Published author,” he sighs. 

Something about that particular repetition twists in Jughead’s gut. 

He relieves himself and then takes a minute to splash cold water on his face, appraising himself in the mirror. It’s a _clean_ mirror for one, not dingy and streaked like his shitty grad apartment or the bathroom at his preferred dive bar. The hotel room mirror had been just as crisp, but an unconfirmed number of whiskey neats gives Jughead a cruel eye. He might like himself with the glasses—a less _on the nose_ on the nose addition than his tweed—but the suit turns him into something Jughead doesn’t like the look of. It blends into his image, as though he is someone who is comfortable in suits and frequents upscale bars and drinks top-shelf liquor; Jughead knows himself better and accepts that this version of himself is short-lived, likely to end by his own deliberate hand, rather than fizzle out with an underwhelming sophomore novel.

But no matter how it goes down, Jughead knows that it will. Things always do for him. 

When his phone buzzes, Jughead fumbles as it gets stuck on the lining of his trouser pocket. It lands face down on the pristine tile and _fuck_ he hopes it didn’t spider the crack that has been there since the _last_ time he dropped it in a bar bathroom. Though now, he supposes, he could afford to replace it with a model that isn’t four iterations old. 

One split off the main crack, no splintering. 

Even if it had, Jughead wouldn’t care—couldn’t, not when one of the notifications on the screen bears the name Betty Cooper. 

It’s hours old, the latest pop-up having only been a flight reminder for the next morning, and he can’t read what it says because suddenly the screen blurs and he isn’t sure if that’s from the whiskey or the tears. 

Swiping to unlock the screen, Jughead deletes the message from his text log, same as he does after every brief, perfunctory—insincere, he thinks bitterly—exchange that they have. Happy Birthdays and Merry Christmases and even _I saw your name in Kenyon! Haven’t read yet, but looking forward to it._ She always texts first, unless it’s her birthday and he taps the letters on autopilot. Betty will answer, usually within five minutes, with a _thanks!_ and a grinning emoji; he always receives the cookie cutter response one sends to old high school acquaintances who remember birthdays, the same one, save the emoji, he sends back on October 2nd. 

Jughead doesn’t want to know what she’s said, not tonight. 

The whiskey muddies things and the longer he stares at the glare of the factory-setting landscape background, the more he feels himself drifting, his resolve softening. 

“Where the fuck are contacts on this thing,” he growls, scrolling and swiping until her name once again blurs on the screen, safely tucked between Andrea from his workshop class and “Brad (Psych Lab).” With a shaking thumb, Jughead taps the little phone icon next to her name. 

The contact photo startles him as it takes up the whole of his screen, a now-decade old selfie of the two of them at Sweetwater River back in freshman year. Jughead doesn’t remember that being her contact picture, let alone remember taking it. 

_“Hello, this is Betty Cooper. I’m not available right now so leave a message and I’ll get back to you!”_ It’s a simple chirp, meant for the nameless and faceless robocallers or the MBA candidates who call to take her out to dinner, but her voice is so familiar, so missed that he feels as though she’s speaking right to him. 

_I’ll get back to you, Jug!_

But she never did. Not that he gave her any chances to. 

_Fuck,_ he misses her. 

The tone of the voicemail startles him, egging him on in conjunction with the half bottle of liquor and the sad stare he gives himself in the mirror and the echoes of _published author!_ from his father. He should hang up. He _needs_ to hang up. 

But he doesn’t. This night, this feeling _,_ it’s all something Jughead once imagined sharing with her. He is _supposed_ to be sharing this with Betty. Maybe getting to this point was something he needed to do on his own; it’s what he told himself, unconvincingly, the many times in college that he wanted to reach out to her. _We’re figuring out who we are outside of Riverdale, outside of each other. We’re owed that, we owe it to each other._

“Owed shit,” Jughead mumbles. He was— _is—_ such a moron. 

Maybe, though. Maybe if he tries to explain, to put words to the calm that washed over him and the clarity that came with putting it all on the page—his own messy version of therapy. Maybe. 

Jughead knows who he is now, outside of Riverdale and outside of his relationship with Betty. 

He knows that he doesn’t want to _be_ the Jughead without a relationship with Betty, no matter the nature of that relationship. 

This was supposed to be their night to share. He wonders if it still might be. 

  
  
  
  


* * *

The dial tone of the voicemail bot cuts off Jughead’s final, clearly drunken, words. 

Betty replays the message.

And then plays it again. 

Parts of it loop through her head as she goes through her morning routine: turning on the coffee pot, letting the shower water warm up, pouring fresh kibble in Toffee’s dish, swallowing her medications. 

Betty remembers the giddy smile he gave her back in sophomore year when she gifted him the Underwood for Christmas. They hadn’t even been together then, but their orbits were too in sync to stay away. 

Jughead had pushed her away during that breakup, too. It seems so long ago, that night he left her crying in the cold parking lot; longer so, the afternoon he hugged her goodbye before she went off to New Haven. 

Both times, Betty knew he needed space, no matter how much it hurt her to give it to him. Even now, something cracks in her chest at the memory of her hope for him to reach across that space dwindled. The one word answer to her happy birthday text, the deafening silence over winter break when he may have finally caught his breath from the first whirlwind semester of college as she had, the complete erasure of all his social media. 

In the shower, she runs a conditioning mask through the ends of her hair, yanking at the knots when they don’t give way just to give her hands something to do.

Once the memories trickle in, it is impossible to keep them dammed up. 

All those afternoons in the Blue & Gold, taking a red pen to his articles when he didn’t ask and to his homework when he did. Reading his contest submission and barely making a mark on the printed paper, rumpled from him when he scribbled last minute notes in the margin while in bed before handing it to her. 

She brushes her teeth with a little extra force, even though her dentist has advised against it, lest she accelerate her receding gums or further her tooth sensitivity. 

That look in his eyes when she finally told him what she’d done—how deeply she fucked up—haunts her. It doesn’t plague her every waking moment like it used to, nor does it appear in her dreams as often, but it’s there. It burns across her mind right now. 

There isn’t enough sugar in her first sip of coffee; maybe she brewed it a little too strong, or wasn’t paying attention to how full the spoon was. 

That first summer after college, the one-year mark from graduation and Jughead’s proposed reunion and her confession, she showed up. Betty didn’t think Jughead would have, though she could have guessed Archie and Veronica would be no-shows. She idled in the parking lot for 28 minutes, arguing with herself and meticulously considering the pros and cons of walking through the diner door, of sliding into the booth across from him. 

He looked so lonely. She felt so scared. 

Betty doesn’t realize there are tears in her eyes until she looks in the mirror, staring at herself with a mascara wand at the ready. She needs to let the puffiness go down before attempting concealer. 

She’ll have to change the shirt under her blazer, too. The overheated, panicky feeling coursing through her manifests in red splotches up and down her breast bone. 

Betty didn’t know Jughead was being published. After his Kenyon Review piece reduced her to a blubbering mess on the metro, she knew that seeking out his writing was a form of self-harm she needed to curb. 

It’s big, though. Big enough for a Manhattan launch event. 

JB posted a photo on her Instagraph account last night, grinning wide next to a sheepish Jughead and an FP whose smile was even bigger than hers. Jughead has glasses now, and though his hair is still messy and he still looks uncomfortable in a suit, he’s grown into his handsomeness. 

(She always knew he would.) 

Betty and JB don’t really keep in touch, but their occasional holiday greetings and conversations are always warmer than the ones Betty receives from the older Jones sibling, so she took what she could get. She had immediately liked the photo, pride bubbling over and heart aching, before realizing that JB tagged Jughead and he would inevitably see Betty’s username on it. If he hadn’t told her about the book, there’s a reason for it, so she double-tapped again, the red heart disappearing from view. 

Beneath it, a comment appears from __VCLodge,_ reading “Way to go, Torombolo!” and bracketed with so many emojis that Betty knew it was to purposely annoy him. 

Betty opened the wine after that. Found the book on Billions-o’-Pages and ordered without even reading the description. Read the description and then drained her glass in order to refill it. 

Glass number three was spent typing and re-typing a careful message that apparently went unread. Betty had been content with it, even proud of herself for sounding sincere but detached—and not at all like she drank half a bottle of wine to muster the courage to text her ex-boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend who wrote and published an entire novel about their relationship. 

**_I’m so happy for you, Jug. You deserve this._ **

Now, Betty scrolls through all the comments on JB’s post before tapping through to Jughead’s profile. It’s a new one, almost as bare as the now-deleted accounts he only half-heartedly used in high school, but still polished and professional and now bears the same photo as JB. “Wouldn’t be here without them,” posted five hours ago. 

Upon checking the timestamp of the voicemail, Betty sees that the timeline matches. 

Did thinking of her prompt this post, she wonders, or did the caption’s sentiment inspire some of the words in the voicemail. 

Her email dings, Billions-o’-Pages telling her that her order has shipped. So much for cancelling the purchase. 

But—

The order means sales numbers for Jughead, reinforces that he earned this. After his message, Betty doesn’t know if she can manage to read it. Not if he is so adamant that writing it down was his way to end their story, to shut that door for good. Not if there’s anger inked on the pages like blood—the anger she wished he had shown that awful, silent summer, when instead he gave up on her and on them and made her walk away. 

Not if… not if Betty will have to relive falling in love with him. 

Maybe this is the punishment she deserves. 

Even after all these years, Betty feels like she deserved worse than the fading out of their relationship. Staring at Jughead’s book on her shelf, unread, seems to fit the bill. 

Riverdale clings to every fiber of her being; Betty knows she doesn’t get the kind of blank page that Jughead spoke of. 

  
  
  


She pays for the bottle of wine in triplicate once settled in her cubicle in Quantico, the glare of the fluorescents exacerbating the dull pain behind her left eye. The extra coffee only helps in that she needs to get up for the bathroom more often, earning a break from the mind-numbing review of bank records. 

Betty had always known that time she spent with Charles back in high school was not the typical FBI experience—the fact that the agent in charge was a criminal himself notwithstanding—but the amount of deskwork often has her wishing she followed several of her more obnoxious classmates to Wall Street. It would be the same amount of bullshit with at least some tangible reward. 

Not that the work Betty does is without reward, per se, but her contributions to this mortgage fraud case will not bring her anything close to the same amount of satisfaction as when she and Jughead investigated together in high school. She is trained for the field, has an issued service weapon, knows all the government-specified interrogation techniques—and uses none of them in her day-to-day life. 

The paperwork allows her mind to wander too much and Betty spends the next few days with her thoughts ping-ponging between financial statements and the bitterness in Jughead’s voice in the message. 

It swirls with the crack in his voice that echoes through her dreams again, ones that leave her more exhausted in the morning than when she went to bed. The week drags but even Friday can’t bring her much relief because a padded envelope lays at her floral welcome mat when she comes home. 

She kicks off her heels and wrestles with her bag and blazer while walking through the door and attempting to rip open the package. Toffee wakes up, disgruntled by all the noise, but doesn’t move from her spot on the armchair when Betty drops onto the couch. 

The book jacket shines, smooth and glossy under her touch. She runs her thumb up and down the spine, unable to quell the pride that comes back in an instant to see his name on a physical book. Not in a million years would she have expected Jughead to publish under his given name; she supposes, though, that the Jughead she knew wouldn’t have, but Betty doesn’t know this version of Jughead. 

His author photo on the back flap makes her giggle a bit—in a tweed coat and glasses, Jughead looks every bit the academic cliche and Betty knows that any version of him would have both loved and hated that fact. There isn’t much of a bio: _Forsythe resides in Iowa City, where he is a graduate student in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop._ For this she is grateful because Betty thinks that any more detail on his life might send her further into a tailspin. She can’t know if he still likes to work in journalism, if he keeps up with local crime, if he has a significant other, even if he has a pet of his own. 

Toffee joins her on the couch finally, rubbing her face against the book’s corner.

With a tremor in her hand, Betty opens the front cover and hears the satisfying crackle of the spine’s glue stretching. The words from his voicemail had convinced her not to read it, but now that it’s here, the temptation is too great. 

She loses her nerve as she lifts the third page, knowing the dedication will be next. 

_It’ll be for you,_ Jughead used to whisper when he dared to dream about this very book. 

Betty doesn’t want to know, she can’t. She closes the book gently and wedges it into a free space on her shelves. It sits in her periphery as she puts away her things and feeds Toffee and orders her dinner. 

His last name and the title stare out at her as she picks up her phone and taps “Yes, Delete” when her voicemail app questions her decision. 

  
  
  


* * *

“—owed shit... 

“Uh, hey. ’s me, ’s Jug. I know it’s late and you’re clearly asleep but I saw that you texted. I didn’t read your text because, I’ll be honest, I didn’ want to know what you had to say to me. Not today, anyway. Not right now. 

“Because this is good, today, this is a good thing. I want one good, positive thing that won’t be wrecked with the hurt that comes with thinking about you, about us. But it always comes back t’you anyway.

“So ’course you texted. Fuckin’ ’course you did.

“I assume it’s because of the book. My book. 

“Fuck, Betts. I’m published now. Like f’real published with a legit agent and editor and everything. 

“I did it. 

“You always believed in me, you know. Always believed I would get here, that I could do it. I never really bought that, your blind faith in me. But I guess you were right. In some ways, I don’t think I could have done this without you. Even if we haven’t talked, really talked, in—god, shit—five years? Almost six? 

“I guess, though… guess I technically did do it without you. Y’know?

“Well if you texted about the book, then I guess you prob’ly figured it out. It’s about Riverdale, that much is obvious. But, really, it’s us. The whole thing is about us. Our—our love story. And its demise, I suppose. 

“I wasn’t very nice to either of us; I blamed you entirely in the first draft but in the second draft I realized I was at fault too, I let us just …fade into oblivion. I was pretty mean about you in the first draft, I think. But I needed to get it onto the page, I needed to write our story and see it for all the faults and flaws to appreciate the beauty of it even more. I needed to see it on the page to get that closure. 

“I needed to finish the chapter, close the book, whatever. See, still making annoying metaphors even as a fuckin’ adult. 

“Shit this is pro’ly gonna cut me off soon. But yeah… Had to close the book on Riverdale and the pain we went through and be able to move on from it. A fresh start, this blank page, untouched by all of that. 

“So I dunno, maybe don’ read it? Or do? Maybe you need that blank page, too. 

“I want that for both of us. Maybe we can put it behind us, maybe we can—”

.

.

.

_tbc_

**Author's Note:**

> if you're so inclined, I would love to hear your thoughts.


End file.
